Preschool Mushroom Lesson

This week I started preschool lessons again. I really hope I get a lot of students. For my first lesson I read Mushroom in the Rain by Mirra Ginsburg. I forgot my giant mushroom (a brightly colored blanket), but had I brought it we would have played out the story of the animals hiding under the mushroom by hiding under the blanket. Before class I cut out and colored stems and mushroom "hats" to match. Then I separated them and taped them (with painter's tape) on the walls all over the room. I asked individual students to go find and match the mushrooms. Then we stuck them to a large paper that I had taped to the wall by the story circle. Together we added grass, rocks, rain etc. This served as a mural size example of the project they each worked on. Then I gave them each the parts of a blank mushroom that I had cut from this pattern. The students colored them with gel sticks and then glued them to a piece of paper. We also made fimo mushrooms. Even little ones can do well with this as long as you portion out the amount of clay and help them one step at a time. These mushrooms are special because they glow in the dark!